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Transcript: Arun Shourie's Lecture on 'Indra's Net'

Credits

Sankhadip Dasfor coming up with the idea of transcribing Arun Shourie's main talk, writing the first draft, and sharing it with the forum. Others in the forum and then the HHG team have reviewed the material, which has gone through additional hours of editing. There remain tiny sections where the audio is unclear. We have highlighted certain key passages. The Youtube video is embedded at the end of this post. If a keen ear can spot key missing words, please add a comment and we will update the post.
[March 5: minor transcription updates]

Introduction

Arun Shourie delivered a thought-provoking and witty lecture on January 29, 2014 at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF-India) meet in New Delhi, while releasing Rajiv Malhotra's new book 'Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity'. The written word is powerful and often remains embedded in our memory
longer than the same information received by listening to a lecture. We hope this transcript will complement and amplify the experience
of listening to Arun Shourie ji's video lecture on 'Indra's Net'.

[begin transcription]

Dear
Friends, Mr. Rajiv Malhotra:

Just
few days ago, I got a telephone call saying that “I would like to
speak to Mr.Arun Shourie and I am Rajiv Malhotra speaking.” I said
“How can I recognize you? You have to say I am The Rajiv Malhotra
speaking.” [applause and laughter in the audience]

As
in his earlier books, the three books, so also in this one, Rajiv has
given us a pair of spectacles, a new pair of spectacles through which
to understand, through which to see our own religions and our own
tradition. He has done this with meticulous scholarship and with as
much force, he has smashed the
distorted lenseswhich
were fabricated by so called scholars abroad and here and through
which to our shamewe
had been seeing our religion and our tradition. So, it is a dual
contribution he has made. And
of course the book is full of facts, the book is full of
documentation, but even more so it is suffused with very important
argumentation. It is not citation mongering, just quotations from
here and there or just alleging conspiracy theories. It is an
argument that he gives us as to why it is that certain propositions which
you and I may have taken innocently as just the findings of a
scholar, why that proposition is being advanced.

For
instance, why is it that the church is afraid of the notion of immanence. Most of us would not have thought about it, but
he gives us a deep reason as to why this is like this.

Second
is his plain speaking, because many scholars say things in convoluted
ways. Very often they say it in such a soft way because they are
still looking for careers or acclaim in the very circles that need to
be exposed. Rajiv told me that his formulae, his attitude in this
matter was, that what we do must be, to use this word
‘unignorable’. It is a wonderful word. But that does not mean
abuse, that does not mean just a sort of torrent of strong words. It
means that the kind of scholarship and documentation which he has
provided.

And,
third point about him before I get to the book, is why he is an
example to us; that he is truly independent. He is not dependent on
any institution, he is not dependent on acclaim from an audience.
So, that true independence of an individual scholar is an example
which we should always bear in mind because too often in India I
found, as I had occasion to mention here, earlier on this very
thing, and the last time you were kind enough to call me, [that] too many of
us look for institutional purchase from which to do some work. But great work has been done, has been done by individual scholars
working absolutely alone, unaidedoften unrecognized; on both
sides. If you see [Kosambi]’s work on one side or if
you see [P. V. Kane]'s work on the other side. So, we should take
heart and follow the example of a person like him who labouring alone
has been able to…

I
know from scholars in the West that they are apprehensive
if he walks into a room, in a conference on philosophy or religion or
on Indic studies in the West. So, this book shows how
tendentious his scholarship has been.

Mr.
Doval was just recounting some of these things but really he… if I
may use the word, he shows that the scholars have really been sort of
missionaries in mufti and how they have been insinuating certain
notions in us, sowing the seed of that tree which will keep changing,
but their tree also
keeps changing in this way. And he documents the lengths to which
they will go, if I may just read one passage. One of the chapters is
devoted to a very famous scholar from whom,… who is very well cited
in India by Indian scholars, Paul Hacker, and Rajiv tells us that
when his collected writings were being published to mark his 65th
birthday. These were most... many of his writings were on
India, Indian religion, Hinduism and so on. I’m quoting he says
that “acting on Hacker’s wishes, the editor of his collected
works excluded the author’s polemical
Christian writings from the
compilation”. I have found the same thing in the case of Max
Muller. If we see the four volumes of his letters…It’s called
Sparks from the Smithy's or something [like that], those writings are just
not known in India, but they set out a clear agenda and their hope in
Brahmo Samaj as how it will be the lever by which India would be
converted and their great disappointment when the very person on whom
they were relying, went to Shri Ramakrishna Ji, and Ramakrishnaji
changed him and he became a follower of Ramakrishnaji.

So,
Rajiv documents their tendentious scholarship and the lengths to
which they will go. He documents so well the echo
effect that they create.

And
much of it turns on
definitions. They will define a religion as something and thereby
say, as Doval was, sort of reminding us, that Hinduism is not a
religion as it has no central authority, no book, no prophet.

Nobody
knows who has started the yatra, nobody knows who organizes it and
yet it continues and nobody has been able to erase it. Now for
somebody to define a religion as one that must have central
authority, director, an authority sort of Supreme Court, which can
pronounce something is right or not right, then you say that this is
not a religion. But then you are surprised that it continues. Then
you have to say, no but it does not continue, it is not there, it is
something new, which is being created. This used to be the same thing till even the 1970s, that India was actually not a nation. The
nation was also being defined in same way that which is one race or
one language or one religion or a contiguous
territory and then it turned out
that none of those things helped many other countries at all. So, Rajiv
does this.

They
can not comprehend and if I may quote a Western scholar whom Rajiv
talks so well and about whom also I am sure he would have many things
to educate us with . But
Diane Eck in her wonderful work
on ‘Pilgrimages of India’, she uses a sentence which is
incomprehensible to many of the scholars. She says that India has
been defined not by the writs and edicts
of its Kings but by the foot
falls of its pilgrims. Basically
India was never united. Itne kingdoms the [Hindi], but, have you ever heard
of a pilgrims procession being stopped at any border within it and
those who are inside the tradition? Gandhiji,
Ramakrishna Paramahansa soch bhi nahi sakte they ki aisa question
[koi] puchega. Gandhiji ko dekh lijiye, Vinobha ko dekh lijiye unko –
those who are steeped in the tradition, Vivekananda, they
could see the essential unity and it is just the outsider who sees
only the difference and in this Rajiv so well documents their double
standards. You see the animosities among Christians sects, these
Shias and Sunnis are killing each other. But Christianity, remains a
religion, Islam, remains a religion, magar hamare yahan (in our
case), when there is difference of opinion on things which are
essentially unknowable, say between different ‘Sampradayas’ or
between a ritual then, aise dekha nahin, ek
religion hi nahi (this is not
religion).

Hinduism
is so intolerant that it took away the temples of the Jains; a religion which did not exist till just now! [laughter in the audience]. I’ve documented this in the case of many of these Marxist historians. Similarly
Rajiv so correctly points out, this whole notion that of boundaries,
boundaries between religions: that. these in our case are permeable.
I mention here an example from a survey in Japan, in 1985. Writers have written, there is a book on this. People
were asked what is your religion. So, 95% of them said we are Shinto,
76% of them said we are Buddhists. It couldn't be: because it was no
different for them. It was completely Judaic, Christian, Islamic
notion that you can either belong to this or to that. We are Hindus,
many of the people, persons like me, all my reading
is Buddhist, many of my practices would be from teaching of the
Buddha but nobody would say that I am less of a Hindu or more of a
Buddhist or vice versa and actually this notion was fomented in
India and the first time this happened is in the Shiromani Gurudwara
Prabandhak Committee Act. In that Act, ‘Who is a Sikh’ is
defined. ‘Who is a Sikh’ – He who believes in the Granth Saheb,
He who believes in the Ten Gurus. Most of us could be Sikhs from that
point of view, therefore a new clause was added "..and who does not
belong to any other religion". You and I may think it is just an
administrative thing, but that seed is sown in 1925 and you see it in
the agitations of Bhindranwale and others much later... as to what
happens when these seeds come into being. And as Doval was just
saying one of the essential things about that scholarship was that
and…Rajiv does a wonderful job of documenting this that we can not
do anything right. You see if we remain as we were, let us say we
keep sacrificing animals, then we are fossilized. Hinduism is
uncreative. If people come along and say no,no, sacrifice does not
mean sacrifice of animals, it does not even mean sacrifice of your
material assets alone, it means the sacrifice of your ego. That is
Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga. Then…Neo Hinduism! This was never
there. [laughter in the audience]. And as Rajiv points out that every Christian theology has
actually been inventing a Neo Christianity, but nobody says that.
So, if Vivekananda reformulates things so that it is relevant to the
time, then he is just inventing. If they do something it is creative,
it is renaissance, it is reformation.

Not
only that you see, there are contemporary accounts. We have one of
the best people I know, knowledgeable on Islam and Islamic history or
history of Islamic rule. Islamic historians, contemporary
historians, court historians, writing accounts contemporary with the
events are full of slaughter, of destruction of temples and so on.
So, how is that to be explained? The word that has been used, I was
quite surprised. They say that this proves that this was not being
done. The accounts claiming that all this has been done by our great
king, is because he was not doing this [laughter in the audience]. Why then did you write it?
Because it was trying to table verbal virtue for him. But if that one
inscription shows that after losing a wager,
the Jains had to vacate a
particular temple for the local Shaivites then it will be Hinduism
will be intolerant and the ridiculous lengths to which people will
go… Rajiv documents this in Swami Vivekananda’s case or in the
case of other when they make ANUBHAV, direct personal experience as
the criterion or as the mode,
then that we are only trying to
ape the West and ape Western Science. He asked was Patanjali aping
Western Science or West? Was Ramakrishna Paramhansha aping the West
or Western Science or Ramana Maharshi? So, in every one of these
things I could go on with the details. It’s a book
which is a must for every Indian. We must see our tradition through
the spectacles that persons and specially Rajiv Malhotra has
constructed for us. And it was a particular education for me because I
had focused only on the Marxist historians and felt that they were
regurgitating, sort of swallowing and vomiting what had been written
by some Soviet historians. But I then now realize after reading
Rajiv’s books that they were actually swallowing and vomiting what many
of these so called Western scholars in America and in Austria, or
Germany had written with a purposive agenda. The main lessons from
this book, I’ll spell out three and I’ll sit down after
that.

One
is, there is reason we should look to the future with confidence even
in the religious sphere because in the case of Christianity, Rajiv
points out, attendance is falling by the hour not even by the date.
In places like Belgium, it has almost completely disappeared,
the attendance in churches.
Islam is tearing the Muslim world apart and even more important, it is
a very important and a point of great insight which Rajiv
has made that out of the religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, Indic
religions are the closest to the spirit and substance of
science. Just as the goal of science is the understanding of outer
reality, its method is experimentation and peer review, its means is
the laboratory, so also Indic religions are the science of the inner
world. Their means is personal, direct experience and their peer
review is unending and that is how the religion keep evolving and its method
is entirely the scientific method of empirical verification
through direct personal experience and the means… just that the means
for those persons are laboratories and observations through
instruments,... here a very good phrase Rajiv uses that the means, ours, was the living laboratories of these sages. They looked inside
their own mind and came up with great formulations and great
insights. So, time is on our side and we should do and we should work
on these matters and practice our religion with great confidence. If something requires
reformulation, we should reformulate it and say yes, we have
reformulated it. Because this is the new formulation, this is what is
required for the time. If we need to endow old words with new meaning
we should do that with confidence. We must have and I am sure you
will have after reading Rajiv’s book, a little contempt for
these tendentious scholars.

And the main thing to do is to succeed. Even in intellectual things
nothing succeed like success. Not one of these scholars will
fabricate and propagate the type of nonsense that he does about
India, he will never do it about China [audience concurs]. Because China has become
strong and the scholars know if they write things about China they
will lose their livelihood because they will lose their access to
their sources. So, the important thing is to succeed and then
everything will follow and one reason, final reason for being
confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel,
Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, Rajiv Malhotra – because of the work
of these persons, the corpus is
now reaching a critical mass. So that we can think that within few
years we will have two [series]

One,
A library for India, and a library of India. We should aim for those
but the prerequisite is that we should be like Rajiv Malhotra, we
should know our tradition, we should know our religion. The reason on
account of which this kind of fabrication has prevailed for so long
is that we have not known our tradition, not known our religion and
we have known these only through the eye, we have seen through the
distorted lenses which were fabricated by these tendentious scholars,
these missionaries in mufti.

So,
Rajiv, certainly on my behalf, and I’m sure on the behalf of every
one, and on behalf of all of your readers Thank You.

[prolonged applause. The main lecture ends here. Arun Shourie then has some interesting observations on how Indians misinterpret "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (the whole world is one family). The HHG team has transcribed this portion for the sake of completeness and also because this segment has a very important message for the millions of gullible Indians wallowing in the myth of sameness].

It is not anti-christianity, anti-Islam or anything like that. It is, the book is, it's a wonderful thing both about cosmos and life, this metaphor of Indra's Jaal and also about Hinduism. Every part reflecting every jewel all other jewels. Therefore if anything is changed [or disturbed], it is reflected all over, etc. But he also makes a very important point in the end. Which illustrates... Rajiv illustrates both his style and forcefulness of his argument. It [is an illustration of what he was] telling us in the end. In our anxiety to be liked. we keep repeating words without understanding their implications. Humne Sabse pehle kaha 'Vasudhiva Kutumbakam' [comment on India's tolerance] .... Sari duniya to humne ek mana. So I will read to you where actually says where this word comes from [reading from pages 295-296 of Indra's Net].

"In one story in the Hitopadesa, a cunning jackal, trying to create a place for himself in the home of a naive deer says ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ in his appeal to the deer. The deer ignores warnings from other animals, who caution that it is unwise to trust someone at face value without first ascertaining his history, nature and intent. Upon deceitfully acquiring the deer’s trust and moving in his home, the opportunistic jackal later tries to get the deer killed. Indeed, the moral of this story is that one should watch out for cunning subversives . Blindly trusting those who preach ‘universal brotherhood’ can lead to self-destruction. [a brief comment here before continuing] The Panchatantra encodes this same message in a different story. In this version, the man who utters ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ is described as a murkha (‘idiot’). He is determined to bring a dead lion back to life, and disregards a wise man’s warning about the dangerous consequences of such an act. The idiot and his accomplices feel moved to resurrect the lion after citing this sentiment of universal brotherhood among all living things, and hence end up being eaten by the lion they help. The wise man lives to tell the tale. Clearly, the lesson taught in these stories is not one of blind adherence to a policy of unilateral disarmament." [appreciative applause]...Bahasa is a creation of the Indonesian freedom movement in the 1930-40s. Mother country Italy ke bare me baat kar le [laughter in the audience]. Modern Italian is [Anderson] says modern Italian is a creation of the television age. But we are on the defensive ki saab, Instead of celebrating the fact, that yes, we have so many languages, we get defensive, and that's how this book is so invaluable. It takes us to the root of our defensiveness and that is ignorance about [our own systems]. Aur isi liye, bahut important hai ki Poison pill bhi fabricate karni chahiye, magar jo poison, jo dusron ki pills humne swallow kar li hai, aur repeat karte rehte haiVasudhaiva Kutumbakam, uska bhi meaning asli mein dekhna chahiye!

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